Kobe, Japan, Happy Valentines Day!  We had a smooth night of sailing and arrived in early afternoon.  It was very cold.  As this was the ship's first visit to Kobe we were greeted with a water display from a fire boat.  There were also many people lining the balcony of the cruise terminal, many waving flags.  Some officials came on board to present flowers and gifts to the ship.  We cancelled our afternoon tour as it was very cold and our scheduled tour was to ride a tram to the top of a mountain to view the sunset.  We were able to use the time to go into the cruise terminal to take advantage of the free WiFi.  The next morning we had an early tour, 8 hours to Kyoto.  The weather was cold with light rain.  There was not much to see on the 1 hour drive as the highway is mostly enclosed in high walls, luckily we had brought our books to read.  We visited another World Heritage site, "Nijo Castle".  this dates to 1603. We then went to a Japanese lunch in a nice restaurant with a beautiful garden. Of course many passengers on our tour complained about the food!  Our other stop was a famous "Golden Pavilion" also with impressive gardens.  It was Sunday and the Kyoto marathon was being held.  This made for many closed streets and lots of people causing our bus to have to take several detours.  We noticed about 20 McDonalds during the day and many other US brands, our bus even gave out water from Costco!

Entrance to Nijo castle

Part of the castle grounds

Our Japanese lunch

Kyoto marathon runners

The "Golden Pavilion"

300 year old tree grown on a bamboo frame

Hiroshima, Japan.  After a day at sea we had a nice sail in to the harbor through hundreds of islands.  The surrounding waters have hundreds of oyster beds on raised frames.  The oysters have been raised here since the Shogun era.  The weather was clear and cold, about 40 degrees.  We had to clear Japanese immigration with a temperature check, fingerprinting, and facial recognition, it took a long time to clear 580 passengers.  We skipped a tour to the Peace park, site of the 1945 atomic bomb blast as we had previously been to the Nagasaki site and thought the narrative was very biased.  As an alternative tour we took a trip to Miyajima Island that we reached by ferry boat after a short bus ride.  The island is the site of  Itsukushima, a famous Shinto shrine, that dates to 593 and is a Unesco World Heritage site.  It is built on stilts and the water comes in under it at high tide, it makes for some dramatic photos, unfortunately it was low tide when we visited. There are hundreds of small deer everywhere, they are very tame and even go into the shops.  There were many souvenir shops and other      shops selling a local specialty, a sponge cake in the shape of a maple leaf with different fillings.  There was only one ATM and it was very busy, but we did find a shop that took credit cards so we bought a selection of the cakes to try.  Tom thought this qualified as a Valentine gift.

O-Torii gate is 16.6 meters high and weighs 60 tons, it is free standing

Noel and her new friend

Tide was just starting to come in under the shrine

Machine making the small cakes

Ship's atrium decorated for Valentine's Day

Fancy Valentines desserts for afternoon tea

There were two huge ice sculptures at afternoon tea, unfortunately most passengers were on tour and did not see them.

2/9  This was our roughest night at sea so far, 40 knot head wind and the swell was over 20 feet.  Around midnight it was really rough and we thought we would bounce out of bed!  The sliding door to our balcony came open and the wind sucked the sheer drape outside.  Noel made it across the room by hanging on to the furniture to close the door, Tom never woke up!  It finally calmed down about 4 am.

2/10 and 2/11 Shanghai, China, We arrived at our dock on the Huang Po river at about 6:30 am.  It was very cold, somewhere around 36 degrees F.  We had an afternoon tour so were able to relax around the ship in the morning.  The first part of the tour was to the Shanghai Museum where they have a vast collection of ancient pottery and ceramics, jade, furniture, art, calligraphy and more.  It is a nicely designed modern building and the displays were well done with descriptions in both Chinese and English.  Our next stop was the Yuan Garden in the middle of "Old China Town".  The garden is hundreds of years old and has beautiful buildings as well as decorative plants, trees and limestone rock formations.  Since it is the middle of winter none of the plants were in bloom but were showing buds.  We visited a silk shop and figured out how to use an ATM.  Getting Chinese Yuan from a bank account in Las Vegas in 10 seconds amazes us.  There were evening tours offered but since we had done them on a previous visit we stayed on board and had dinner. We were seated by the window on the river side so we could watch the dinner cruise boats sail by.  Many of the boats had elaborate decor and bright lights including large advertising signs.

On the morning of the 11th we took an early (7:45 am) tour to Zhujiajiao, a water village.  The Chinese refer to it as "like Venice, Italy" (that is really a stretch).  We had a good tour guide and she took us for a walk through the narrow winding streets where we visited  an old post office and a Chinese pharmacy.  We had about a half hour of free time and then boarded a boat for the trip on the canal back to the entrance where our bus was waiting. It was an enjoyable day other than the horrible traffic we encountered on our way back to our ship. Our bus driver was very aggressive and changed lanes continually causing a lot of cars to honk and slam on their brakes.  We won, the bus is bigger!

Shanghai continues to grow by leaps and bounds.  There are many new sky scrapers and huge new apartment blocks since our visit in 2008.  Many of these buildings are very modern designs and it looks like each one tries to out do all the others.  Old housing areas are just being torn down and the residents are relocated far out of the city.  Shanghai has about 24 million residents, double the number of when Tom visited here 20 years ago.  The air quality was fair while we were in Shanghai, but certainly better than when we visited in 2008 when we could not see across the river.

We will not have access to email or phone calls while in Japan, something to do with the ships system not being compatible with the system in Japan.  So will probably not be able to post anything for a few days.

The view across the river from the ship

The Shanghai History Museum

The McDonalds in "Old China Town" seemed very popular

One of the buildings in the Yuan Garden

One of the more elaborate dinner cruise boats

Buildings in water village are combo of homes and businesses

Inside the very old Chinese pharmacy

Our boatman

It was cold enough to wear the down coats!

One of the more bizarre buildings with these weird "pod" things hanging in the middle

We were at sea on February 6 and continue to be amazed at the number of small fishing boats that are well over one hundred miles from land.  One of our recent tour guides mentioned the fact that many fishermen have had to give up fishing because of depleted fish counts, this is certainly not surprising given the huge number of boats we have seen, many dragging huge nets between two boats.
We arrived at Xiamen, China at 8 am and had to endure the usual bureaucratic mess entering China.  We had to have both our passports and a "certified copy" of our passport, then we had to stand in a huge line to have the "police" compare our copy to our original and put a bar code and stamp on our copy that we have to use to check on and off the ship the entire time we will be in China. Since we docked overnight in Xiamen we have had at least 6 or 8 Chinese officials on the ship the whole time.  They certainly take advantage of the   situation, they are constantly in the coffee area and the restaurants and it is obvious that the crew does not like to wait on them.  Last night we were having dinner in the small Italian restaurant on the top deck.  During the day this is the buffet for breakfast and lunch but at night it is sit down Italian.  Just after we were seated, 7 Chinese officials came in, the staff was not quite sure what to do with them as this restaurant gets full very quickly as it is only half the size it is during the day.  They did seat them at two tables and then tried to explain that it was not buffet and they would have to order off the menu and it appeared that they did not really understand and probably could not read Italian or English! (the menu has both).  As the restaurant started to get busy the staff started to panic and eventually called for a management person who made an excellent decision and moved the Chinese over to the closed side of the restaurant and just brought them a variety of food, problem solved!
Our tour during the day was a "Day at Quanzhou", which is a historic seaport.  It was a two hour drive on fairly good highway but the local drivers do not seem to understand the concept of driving in your own lane.  Our bus driver appeared to drive with one hand on the horn constantly honking at other vehicles to warn them that we were coming!  Motor bikes were not allowed in Xiamen but there were thousands of them in Quanzhou and traffic was intense for a Saturday morning.  We toured a Buddhist temple and a ship museum where they had a relic of a 700 year old ship on display.  Of course the signage touted the superiority of the Chinese even centuries ago.  We had lunch at a hotel and luckily had a couple at our table who lived in Arizona but were originally from Taiwan and spoke Chinese so they were able to find out what we were eating!  After lunch there was another walking visit to a mosque and a temple.  Noel did the visit and Tom stayed on the bus. This area is not visited much by foreign tourists and we were a bit uncomfortable as people really stared at us and were saying things in Chinese that sounded unfriendly.  We will probably cancel our tour for tomorrow as several people told us they did not think much of the tour we are scheduled for that they had taken today.

Decoration on the Buddhist Temple wall

Pagoda at the same temple

Relic in the ship museum

Hotel where we had lunch

Lunch with friends Mickey and Richard who had been on the South America cruise with us in 2012.

Elaborate decorations on second Buddhist temple

Thousands of motor bikes were everywhere

Going back to the ship through very fancy cruise terminal

Hong Kong.  We had a beautiful sail into the harbor about one hour earlier that we had expected and docked on the Kowloon side of the harbor.  By 8 am the ship was very busy with a turnover of about 500 passengers as one segment ends and another begins.  We took a tour even though we have been here before, it is always a good idea to get out of the way as the hallways get crowded with lots of luggage and laundry and every crew member is very busy.  Our tour was more oriented to how the locals live since we had previously done all the tourist things.
We had a small tour group and were on a small bus so were able to maneuver in the traffic very well.  We made our way through the tunnel to Hong Kong. Our first stop was a "dry" market where an endless variety of dried fish, seafood, mushrooms, etc was displayed.  Every shop seemed to be selling the same things and most was even displayed in a similar manner.  Next we visited a "wet" market where shops sold fruits, vegetables, meats, flowers, etc.  After walking through this market we boarded a double decker tram that was crowded with locals.  We rode a short distance and went into a local cafe where we were served a very tasty egg custard tart and a choice of coffee, tea, or "yin yang" a combination of tea, coffee and milk.  Noel chose the tea and Tom tried the yin yang.  The tea was so strong that even with milk and sugar Noel could not drink it.  Tom was able to drink the yin yang.  We got back on our small bus and made our way back across to the Kowloon side where we visited a temple and walked around a jade market.
After returning to the ship for a late lunch we went into the huge shopping center that is connected to the cruise terminal.  Noel was looking for some warmer clothes.  This was not the place to shop for bargains, even a poorly made sweatshirt was $50, needless to say, we did not buy anything.  We had dinner and then went up on the top deck to see the evening light show that happens every night at 8pm.  We sailed out of the harbor at 9 pm and were treated to one of the most spectacular skylines in the world.
Hong Kong continues to change with new buildings and a high speed train line is being built to connect Beijing and Hong Kong.  There are still under currents and concerns about Hong Kong being changed into mainland China, but it appears to be inevitable.

Sailing in to Victoria harbor 6:30 am

Mostly dried fish displayed in bins and jars

Lots of beautiful flowers in the wet market

One of the booths in the jade market

Lasers are part of the evening light show

Many of the buildings have elaborate light displays

We weren't sure what this picture was, it looked like a dragon dropping gifts off a building??

Halong Bay, Vietnam.  We finally arrived in Halong Bay at 5:30 pm yesterday, about six hours late.  It was quite foggy so we could not really see much before it got dark.  The tour staff were able to get additional tour boats for us to all get a tour of the monoliths today.
We left at 8:15 am for a three hour tour (yes, just like Gilligans's Island!).  It was foggy and the limestone monoliths were rather eerie.  These rock formations jutting from the sea are spectacular.  There are over 1000 of them scattered in a relatively small area and some of them rise 100's of feet.  We also visited a floating seafood market that was located among the monoliths.  The tour was taken on a boat known locally as a "junk boat".  We boarded these directly from our ship by first stepping onto a barge that was tied up to our ship.
There are tens of thousands of people living in the bay on boats, some very small.  They all had laundry hanging somewhere and many had tv antennas!Some families are seldom on land.
This area produces coal, much of which is exported to China and Singapore. We saw many of the coal barges pass by our ship.  Tom does not think the transport meets OSHA and EPA standards and plans to report back to Obama.
Much of rural Vietnam lacks basic sanitation, infrastructure, and education.  In fact there is no requirement for children to go to school.  The Halong Bay area is a major tourist attraction and the communist government has tried to dress it up.  There is a beautiful suspension bridge that has a spectacular computerized light show at night that was near where our ship was anchored.  There are large boats that offer overnight accommodations and we  noted a lot of Asian tourists.
We are off this evening on our way to Hong Kong  for the last segment of our "Grand Voyage".  We have been to the upcoming ports on past cruises but have scheduled tours that will be new for us.  It will be much colder for this last two weeks and we have already packed up the summer clothing.
After a week in Vietnam we have some definite views.  While the government tries to control everything the people mostly do what they can just to survive.  There is no social net such as social security or unemployment.  The people are very much capitalists trying whatever they can to earn money.  Noel wants to come back to shop.  There are definitely some bargains.

Light show on bridge

Looking down on barge that we used to load onto junk boats

Inside cabin of junk

There are 600 junk tour boats for tourists

We needed jackets for the first time on the cruise

Rock formation is supposed to be fighting chickens?

Pulling up to the floating fish market

Some of the available seafood

Da Nang, Vietnam.  After another rocky sea day we arrived in a small commercial port near Da Nang.  Last night we had a pre-dinner James Bond 007 show with martinis.  Tom felt right at home.  We also had dinner with John and Cathi Begg who had been on the Circle South America trip with us in 2012.  The show was really terrific with great character acting including a all the Bond theme songs, dancing, a fight scene and acrobatics.
Our tour went to Hoi An, a world heritage site.  We had a good tour guide and she had memorized all our names but she very much stayed on the party line.  Our first stop was a marble factory, really amazing stuff but we only had 15 minutes, barely enough time to visit the "happy room" (restroom)!  We would have liked to have more time at this stop.  Hoi An was interesting, full of tiny shops that had once been part of the ancient trading village, but the historic part was rather limited.  There is a lot of garment making and other textile manufacturing in Vietnam so those things are the best bargains.  Not sure if the items are seconds or perhaps pilfered?? but we bought a nice North Face Gore Tex jacket for $28 and two Kipling purses for $23. We stopped at a beautiful Vietnamese restaurant for a great lunch.  It was nice that all the dishes were labeled so we knew what we were eating! It was apparent that the government in trying to develop Da Nang as a resort area but is failing.  There are a couple of golf courses a a few resorts are open but did not appear to have much going on.  There were a large number of incomplete projects that looked abandoned.  There was far less traffic in Da Nang compared to Saigon.  Some of the US infrastructure is still in use, mainly bridges and the airport.  We also saw "China Beach", a favorite of GI's during the war.
We left the port at 4 pm on our way to Ha Long Bay, then about 5:30 we heard a call for a medical emergency in one of the lounges.  While we were at dinner an announcement was made that the injured passenger (later heard it was a possible stroke) needed to go to a hospital and a helicopter evacuation was not possible due to the 40 knot wind and 3 meter swell we were experiencing so we were turning around to go back to port. This will put us at least 5 hours behind schedule so we will not be able to have our tour of the Ha Long Bay monoliths tomorrow. Apparently we were not able to get into the commercial port and had to go farther to the actual city of Da Nang.  It was around midnight that we finally got underway again.  It was a very rough night and things were falling over in the room and it was very noisy with lots of banging noises from the ship and difficult walking just the dozen steps to the bathroom!

Corner gas station for scooters

Lantern shop in Hoi An

One of the buffet tables at our lunch stop

Dragon bridge in Da Nang